The idea of meaning is . . . less a tool of analysis than a means of self-titivation. The awesome difficulty of gaining access to the meanings of others, or even one's own, the chasms of communication, the contemplation of the precipices which separate us - all this is used more to often us up than to illuminate use.'

'We have always known that the world is mediated by meanings. The world is, if you like, the totality of meanings rather than of things. But things do have their reality and exercise constraints over us, and some ways of knowing them are more effective than others. An exaggerated meaning-centredness, which obscures all this, cannot be salutary.'